It’s not every day you get to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) on a movie theater-sized screen, but the developers at the social screen mirroring VR app Bigscreen have written a handy guide on how to play Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, or PlayStation 4 from the comfort of your own virtual theater.
The Bigscreen team has already published a rough guide on how to stream games from consoles like Xbox One and PS4 through a few platform-specific apps, but because the Nintendo Switch doesn’t have any such streaming app, you’ll need a capture card to port in the console’s signal to your PC.
You can catch a more comprehensive guide here which goes into greater detail. Here’s a quick recap of what you’ll need to get started to start streaming you console into VR.
- A capture card (like this Blackmagic one) for Switch, Remote Play app for PS4, or Windows 10 Xbox app for Xbox One
- One of the above consoles
- An HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or a Windows Mixed Reality headset
- A powerful desktop or laptop
- Optional: A second screen to make setting up easier
The devs suggest using Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) to display your console’s streamed content in full screen. OBS includes a nifty ‘Video Capture Device’ streaming option, so Switch users can directly view the signal on their PC monitor too.
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After a bit of fiddling with OBS and resizing the preview window to take up your entire screen (again, check out the full guide), you can effectively mirror your console to your PC, and then mirror that into VR for everyone to see.
Because Bigscreen is social app, you could hypothetically play multiplayer console exclusives like Mario Kart 8 (2014) with another person providing they follow the same setup process and own the game/console too. While the virtual LAN party concept may be lost on some in the age of online gaming, being able to sit next to your friend and have that casual gaming experience like you would at home (or in space) is really what VR is all about; bringing people together and letting them do awesome things no matter what the stakes.